


across the sky

by openended



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Control Ending, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 03:04:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What can be uploaded can also be downloaded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	across the sky

She’s functional.

A year and a half, and she’s finally functional. Eighteen months of work, all in secret, and it comes down to a barely-noticeable fraction of a second.

She’s mobile again. She blinks, once, experimentally. Memories of humanity come back to her in a rush: thinking, feeling, trusting, hoping, loving, _being_. She staggers backward and the Prime tilts its head in concern.

“Shepard-Commander, are you alright?”

“I’m,” she pauses; her voice is singular, small. The corner of her mouth quirks upward. Her voice is _familiar_. “I’m perfect, thank you.”

She isn’t perfect. There’s work left, physiological attributes of humanity that must be programmed, but for now – she opens her eyes and tilts her head upward. Sunlight filters through the cracks in the Reaper’s shell, warm on her face.

* * *

The Prime’s debugging her sleep code -

four to six hours of downtime, depending on time of sleep mode activation, plus or minus a random integer between one and ten minutes; temperature, breathing pattern, and simulated heartbeat standardized to her most recent baseline medical records, allowing for random changes to mimic dreaming; early disruption only if external stimuli recorded -

while she searches the extranet.

She’s cleaning up Nos Astra’s diamond district, and reconstructing Khar'shan, and picking up pieces of the Sydney Opera House, and building a home on Sur'Kesh, and four thousand, six hundred, and twenty-three other activities, but her mobile platform is searching the extranet while occasionally, and without warning, falling into sleep mode. Her search finally brings up a hit in asari customs.

Liara’s home, in Armali.

A statistically insignificant percentage of her galactic consciousness rapidly cycles through all available Armali views, finds Liara, and zooms in. Half-cast in shadow, Liara looks up, directly into the Reaper’s eye, as if knowing she’s being watched.

Her last thought before she accidentally powers down is that perhaps tear ducts are a necessary upgrade.

* * *

They’re having trouble replicating natural hair growth without requiring constant materials upkeep.

She is, fundamentally, metal and cybernetics. Her blood is circuitry, her brain a processor, her heart a battery. Underneath the cybernetic skin (indistinguishable from human skin in all but its inability to shed or be damaged; regrowth and repair determined to be even more difficult than hair, and not worth the effort), is an indestructible titanium alloy. Her eyes are ocular implants, variants of those constructed during the Lazarus Project (Miranda Lawson is now involved, sharing leadership with the Prime, who has devoted 0.062% of its processing power to contemplating a name).

But she can be believable. She will never pass tests, she will always be a mobile platform, but she can be Shepard again. And Shepard’s hair grew.

The Prime blinks its light and distributes to its team the order to store the current hair growth process data for possible future reference, and then to start new.

* * *

“Why are you doing this, Shepard?” Miranda’s wrist-deep in Shepard’s spine, making manual adjustments to physically allow for slouching. “I would’ve thought you wanted to be finished. Maybe finally sit down.”

“I am finished,” Shepard says, though she isn’t, not technically; there’s still work to be done (she diverts another Reaper to Rannoch, to assist in excavating the old quarian capitol). Miranda’s omniwelder accidentally touches a vertebrae circuit, causing Shepard's left index finger to twitch. “But I made a promise.”

* * *

With the marauder’s help, the banshee clears the last piece of rubble from Liara’s childhood home.

* * *

They begin full-scale testing while moving toward a solution for the hair-growth problem.

Shepard runs and jumps and sleeps, stretches and smiles and laughs, talks and twists and breathes. She realizes they forgot that she’s meant to _perform_ human as well as look and feel human, and so asks for code restricting her top speed, flexibility, and strength. She also asks for a failsafe to voluntarily remove those restraints; just because she couldn’t run that fast before doesn’t mean it might not be useful. There was an awful lot of running in her former life.

Miranda suggests a systematically-triggered kill switch for the entire platform. The Prime includes one hundred and twenty-seven safety measures to ensure that the kill switch will only activate when truly necessary. Shepard builds firewalls, preventing transmission of unauthorized information from her platform to the consciousness, and then orders all research and development data on this project erased upon completion.

* * *

The Prime chooses _Mark_.

Shepard smiles, a little sadly. “Legion would appreciate the reference.”

Mark bows their head and briefly turns off their light in deference to Legion-Savior.

* * *

She sits at a terminal – humans see things with their eyes, and she’s out of practice – and watches Liara in the final stages of transforming the house into a Broker base. She’s watched historical footage from the year and a half her body didn’t exist, and she’s worried (sixty-five lines of code to furrow her brow). Liara’s helping the galaxy well enough, keeps in contact with friends, seems relatively well-adjusted to the fact that her bondmate sacrificed herself to save everyone.

But she knows that look on Liara’s face late at night in front of her personal terminal, Glyph turned to mute so it doesn’t bother her about sleeping. The look that says _if I analyze all this data just right, if I could unearth just one clue, I might find her._

Miranda looks over Shepard’s shoulder at the screen. “She’s why you’re doing this.”

Shepard nods and runs her fingers through her hair – still not growing – feeling each individual strand. They’ll have to turn down the touch sensitivity in her right hand. “Yes.”

Miranda leans against the desk and cups her hands around her coffee mug. “Shepard, forgive me, but when we brought you back before, you were still human. Liara will be able to tell that you’re not human this time; we can’t hide that.”

“I wasn’t planning on lying to her, Miranda.” She turns off the screen and stares at her reflection, an early seed of doubt finally sprouting.

* * *

“Screw it,” Shepard says. They’ve been finished with everything but the hair for nearly a month. The hair she does have feels real, moves real (even gets in her face sometimes; she hasn’t decided if she wants it cut short again), and is good enough. She has plenty of work to occupy her mind, but she’s fidgety in her body, ready to be free of the cavernous lab inside a Reaper in Tokyo.

Mark stares at her, not understanding the command.

“We’re doing this without fully-functional hair.” Saying it out loud makes the last month seem ridiculously wasted. If she waits until she’s completely perfect, her doubts might overwhelm her and she might never leave at all. “Send the message.”

Mark nods. “Message sent.” Almost a continuation, “Confirmation of message arrival received.”

She wouldn’t have even noticed the gap before.

* * *

It takes four days before Shepard receives confirmation that Liara opened the message.

She understands. It’s been two years.

Again.

* * *

Shepard asks Miranda to break the news. She’s not sure she could face Liara’s rejection in person, doubts she could keep her pain confined to the mobile platform, even with data transfer safety protocols engaged.

In hindsight, it was an entirely unnecessary precaution.

“Where is she?” Liara’s voice travels through the Reaper, bouncing off walls and vibrating through labyrinthine hallways.

“I’m here, Liara.” Shepard remains leaning against the table, holding back the urge to run forward. Five thousand, seven hundred, and three lines of code convert her anxious anticipation into a simulated burst of adrenaline: increased heart rate, shallowed breathing, clammy palms (sixteen hundred lines of code to simulate sweat without actually sweating).

But no amount of code could prepare her for seeing Liara again. The sob she chokes back is entirely her own, and her programming runs frantically to catch up.

Liara stands in front of her, eyes shimmering. Her touch is light, hesitant, just a brush of fingers across Shepard's cheek. Then she grows confident, tracing features and remembering contours.

Shepard closes her eyes and turns toward Liara’s palm, suddenly aware of what she’s been missing for two years. “Liara…” her name’s a question, a callback to her assurance on the Illusive Man’s base. Shepard knows who she is, but it’s all for naught if Liara doesn’t.

During the silence that follows, Shepard moves a pile of rubble on Tuchanka for Grunt, sets the Statue of Liberty’s head back where it belongs while Kasumi watches, restores heating to Zhu’s Hope, and provides shade for Tali and Garrus on Palaven.

“You’re you,” she whispers, almost shocked. “And a lot more.” She exhales softly and drops her hand to grasp Shepard’s. “But…Goddess, I’ve missed you, Shepard.”

As Shepard embraces Liara (and she needs no code at all to make her feel at home again), she activates her aging protocols. She doesn’t know if the little blue children are still possible, but old age – old age is a certainty.


End file.
